The UCSB Chamber Choir really has something to sing about this season. Founded in 1995 by current conductor Michel Marc Gervais, the group is celebrating its 15th anniversary, and members have a chance to celebrate in a unique way.
The ensemble was invited to travel to France for a major collaboration with the famous choir school at Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris. The honorable collaboration will be a first of its kind for the chamber choir—and for Notre Dame.
“It’s really exciting because it’s the first time in the 850-year history of the Notre Dame Cathedral that an American ensemble has been invited to collaborate,” Santa Ynez resident and choir member Charyl Benton said.
The Notre Dame choir school was also founded by UCSB Chamber Choir’s conductor Gervais, a Santa Ynez resident. That group is celebrating its 20th anniversary this season. Now the 34-member UCSB Chamber Choir ensemble is kicking off a fundraising campaign to pay for the event, which will take place in June 2011. The goal is to raise $50,000 to cover estimated expenses. UCSB will contribute to the project, and Notre Dame Cathedral will pay the performance fee and the choir’s expenses in Paris.
The UCSB Chamber Choir is made up of music majors and others from the campus, specializing in virtuosic choral music usually associated with professional choirs. The choir plays quarterly concerts in Santa Barbara and has collaborated with Eric Ericson Chamber Choir from Stockholm, Madrigalchor Kiel from Germany, the Santa Barbara Chamber Orchestra, the Santa Barbara Symphony, and the Asia-America Symphony Orchestra in Los Angeles, among others. The group has also been featured in a three-hour Swedish television documentary on choral master Ericson and was recently featured at the Ascending Voice II festival at Pepperdine University.
The Notre Dame concert represents the pinnacle of the choir’s experience. The choir will undertake a weeklong residency in Paris, working and rehearsing with the choir school there, and then performing for an audience of several thousand people. The ensemble will wrap up its 17-day trip by performing two concerts in the medieval city of Tours, where members will also serve as artists-in-residence for a three-day International Academy of Choral Conducting led by Gervais.
Though the Chamber Choir has undertaken numerous international concert tours and has seven CD recording to its credit, traveling as a cultural ambassador of the United States is a great honor, Benton said.
“It’s such a rare and unique opportunity,” Benton explained. “Nothing has been as special as this particular invitation was to the Notre Dame.”
Arts Editor Shelly Cone has gargoyles on her desk. Contact her at scone@santa
mariasun.com.
This article appears in Dec 2-9, 2010.